When you first started with Photoshop, you might be overwhelmed by the amount of features and functionalities built for various graphic design tasks and basically don’t know where to begin. So what can we do to overcome this initial difficulty? Just like learning every other thing in life, we start with the easiest part.

In this post, I will provide 5 Simple, Yet Useful Photoshop “How-to”s for Absolute Beginners. Take a look and hopefully you will see after all, Photoshop is not that hard to start with!

Before we start, please note that this tutorial is made in Windows with Adobe Photoshop CS3 and CS4, options may vary in version and OS platform.

How to Draw a Perfect Circle/Square

This might be the first question every beginner would ask. So let’s take a look at the toolbox and find the set of drawing tools as shown below: (to expand, left-click on the rectangular tool and hold)

and You can use those tools to draw rectangule or oval shapes, as shown below:

Now here is the trick: if you would like to draw a PERFECT circle or a square, you must hold down the Shift Key while dragging your mouse:

How to Adjust Brush Opacity and Flow

This is an interest topic – it may seem to be really simple, but the amount of emails and comments I received in regards to this question made me think to include it here.

The options are in fact quite easy to find – if you select the brush tool first, on the option bar above you will the opacity and flow adjustment right there, as shown below:

How to Load Custom Brushsets into Photoshop

These days there are many free Photoshop brushsets you can download from the net, but how to load those beautiful brushset into Photoshop? Here are the steps:

Click on the Brush Tool in the toolbox and click on the drop down arrow next to the brush shape symbol, as shown below”

Next, click on the right arrow on the right hand side of the brush pallette:

You will see a list of options appearing, select the “Load Brushes” option from the list:

and a window will pop up, choose the brushset from the folder and click on “load”:

and that’s it! You will see the newly loaded brushsets in the brush panel:

How to Draw Paths with Pen Tool

Pen Tool can be use to create paths – however, it’s not enabled by default. If you select Pen Tool and straight away to use it, you will see Shapes instead of Paths, as shown below:

So to change it to Path, follow the steps below:

Click onthe Pen Tool in the toolbox and you will a bunch of options appearing on the top bar, click on the second symbol as shown below to change it to Paths:

and that’s it, you can now draw pure paths on your canvas as shown below:

How to Quickly Create Guides in Photoshop

Personally I think this is a rather important and useful function in Photoshop. When you design interfaces (eg. website mockups), you will need to create a sets of guides to ensure precision. But exactly how do we do this?

Here are the steps:

Firstly, if you haven’t turn the Ruler option on, Press Ctrl + R to turn it on, you will see the rulers appearing on top and right of the canvas:

Now if you move your mouse over on the ruler, then left-click and drag, you will see the guides appears on the canvas, as shown below:

and if you would like to clear the guides, simply go to View > Clear Guides

One extra tip with guides: if you right-click on the ruler, you will see a list of options to change the measurements, as shown below:

That’s it for this post! Hope you find it helpful and if you have any further question, just drop me a comment below and I will try my best to assist.

Thinking back to the days when i started using PS… something like this guide would have been helpful in those days :D

Cheerio
Eva

@friendsofdesign

Ramune

Thanks.. I just started learning with photoshop, and it’s
realy helpful for me

Aparna

Thank u!Helpful topic.

http://www.eavathar.com Naveen

that was a good one

3rabia graphics

thnxxxxxx ..{

Michael

Thanks, nice!

dimpy gulati

hello, first of all many thanks for gr8 help.
i just want to knw hw to record our actions in photoshop & tell me about baica of animation ?

Russ

Thanks I learnt a few tricks. Only learning by trial and error and many tuts.
About brushes, I have so many I can only see a portion of choices on one screen.(1680 by 1050)
Is there any way I can diminish my collection via classification i.e. clouds, water, trees etc?

http://www.airwalk-design.com Airwalk Design

A very unique article. These things are hard to recognise in photoshop. I knew about the brush opacity though, but it took me a long time to notice it.

ksg

yah..i was having prob with the shape and path tool….couldn’t find where to change..thanks..

WOW if i had this 3 years ago it would have been a godsend to me lol as it wasi discovered by trail n error
nice handy tips ill be linkin this page tho so that
crawling photoshoppers can learn
thxxx ^.^

mumthas

thanx for the service to brush up the forgotten lessons

http://www.avangelistphotography.com avangelist

And these are myths how exactly?

This is a “Guide for people who can’t be bothered to read the manual”

Aamir hayyat

ur tips were really help full thnks .wish best 4 u

Anaz

I am a .net web developer and beginner in photoshop designing……..
I feel great thankful to the authr of dis article…….

and i would like to know how i can make use of
the T tool I tried but mistakes are happening…

Anaz

so for those with great mind can u

teach me how i can become friendly with it
to make labels or add sticker designing

The tutorial is completely for fresh ps users. This will definitely help them to get aware of the selection tools.

Hahahelf

thanks!

Solei Men

many thx

Aftab Alam

Thnks for guide me

Sumit Paul

thank you so much…it was a great help..!!!

Rajev

A million thanks for the easy, pleasant and encouraging way to learn PS.

Rashmin Bhagwat

Hi, how exactly can the above 5 be called “Myths”???…. myths are usually “busted” in related posts….you havent mentioned mentioned a single “myth” associated with the above tools, and then proceeded to bust it….
Nevertheless, the post itself is very helpful and educative….Thanx.
– Rashmin Bhagwat